


Mad Science

by Mooncactus



Category: Frankenstein MD
Genre: Ableist Language, F/M, Unrequited Love, character piece, spoilers for the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 16:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2354966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mooncactus/pseuds/Mooncactus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Iggy DeLacey has always had abysmal luck with girls. But he didn't ever think it'd get quite this bad. </p><p>Contains spoilers for the show (up to episode 13) as well as the book version of Frankenstein.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mad Science

**Author's Note:**

> Not quite sure exactly where this came from, but HEY, WHY NOT. I'm enjoying this show immensely and am really excited for it to get to the darker elements. Iggy is also a really really fun voice to write in.
> 
> Thank you to Kelsi for providing some excellent suggestions! :D

Iggy DeLacey tended to fall for the wrong girl.

It was an issue that was getting worse over time, he decided. Freshmen year of college it had been Laney Kirwin, his first real girlfriend. She was great. Cute, smart, majoring in biochem at a nearby school, superior to him in every possible aspect. A nice girl who made him break out in hives whenever he even _thought_ about holding her hand. A girl who, when he broke up with her, started showing up at his work (the most respectable Pizza Hut in the area) and pushing envelopes with locks of her hair under his dorm room door.

His roommate found the entire thing hilarious. Iggy did not.

Thankfully, restraining orders were surprisingly easy to obtain when you had footage of your ex scaling building to try and find what class you were in, and that was that.

High school romance was far less pee-your-pants terrifying. Not that it didn’t feel like that at the time, his true love being the ever generic popular-girl-who-pretended-he-didn’t-exist cliché. He helped her cheat on her science tests, she promised to get lunch with him one day, she went off to some state school in Arizona and he never saw her again. Life went on.

So he went to med school, swearing off women. He would turn down any girl who asked him out, no matter how much they begged him. (No one asked him out.) Med school girls were weird, anyway. There was one girl in their year, his friend had told him, who had gone totally _crazy_ after her mother died. Apparently she had stood up and made a scene at the funeral, how it wasn’t fair, how they were supposed to fix this, and her dad had carried her out of his own wife’s funeral, as she had kicked and screamed like a child.

Victoria Frankenstein was a weird one. Everyone said so.

He had been late to class, one day. … Okay, a lot of days. But on that particular day, the only seat in the lab left had been next to some girl with long red hair who was focusing too heavily on her notes to be the slightest bit aware of the rest of the world.

It wasn’t until the class break that her head lifted, and he gasped.

“Wait a minute,” he said, and she turned and looked at him for the first time. “You’re Frankenstein.”

The redhead’s eyes narrowed. “Yes I am,” she said, as if daring him to say anything else.

“But you’re – you’re the top of our class,” he said, surprising himself.

Frankenstein blinked. “Yes I am.”

“God, that’s awesome. I work my ass off just to get an solid A. Up top.” He held up his hand, and she frowned before giving him a high five.

They talked for the rest of the week. Or, well, Iggy talked, and Frankenstein sort of vaguely paid attention. She was so scary smart. Her memory was unbelievable and she seemed to know _everything._ His friends would corner him after class, asking to know what weird thing Frankenstein had done or said to him, and he realized it was jealousy. She was wickedly intelligent and wanted nothing to do with them, so they would spread rumors and isolate her until no one dared approach her.

Though, to be fair, that seemed to be how Frankenstein liked it.

Two weeks into the semester he dropped into his chair, groaning pathetically, and Frankenstein raised an eyebrow.

“What happened to you? The factory that makes your nerdy tee-shirts go out of business?”

“First of all,” Iggy said, “ _ouch._ Second … was that a joke?”

“Maybe,” she said, with a little smile, and he considered it.

“We’ll have to work on your delivery. But not a bad start. And no, that is not why I am upset. I am upset because,” he paused for dramatic effect, “today is lab partner day.”

Frankenstein looked at him.

“Every single semester,” said Iggy. “Every single one, all my friends pair up and leave me alone. Do you know how _awkward_ it is to ask every person in class if they have a partner yet? Last semester I had to get my professor to help and I was stuck with the sweaty guy who smelt like mold.”

“I heard that was you.”

“No, the other one – wait, shut up, that’s not the point. The point is it’s humiliating. It’s like being the kid picked last for dodge ball. I hate it.”

“... So,” she said.

“I mean – what I’m trying to say, I mean, like, even though I don’t have your wicked smartness, I think we’ve got, like, a good dynamic going on. So. You know.”

Frankenstein opened her notebook. “I already signed up.”

“Oh,” Iggy said. “Oh. … Right. Sorry for bothering you.” He scratched the back of his neck and stood up. He was pretty sure the girl obsessed with skeletons didn’t have a partner yet. He could ask her. “Sorry again,” he said.

“I meant I signed up to be lab partners with you,” Victoria said, rolling her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic.”

He had probably been a goner then and there.

They were lab partners from there on out, and his friends’ interest in this new development of his life only increased. As soon as she was out of earshot, they’d tail him, ask him for whatever weird things Her Royal Evilness had done. Which he didn’t mind – Victoria could be a lot to handle, especially in the early days, and it was nice to have someone to vent to. But over time he became quicker to defend her, and found himself spending more time with her outside class than he did with his other friends.

He learned that Victoria didn’t have any other friends at Eagle State. She pretended not to care, but he didn’t think having your only friends live over an hour away was any way to live. He introduced her to Robert, an extremely chill undergrad with whom he had bonded over a love of Lando, and they surprisingly hit it off. Iggy was pretty sure she liked people who she didn’t feel threatened by. (Including him, but whatever.)

She had introduced him to her best friend since childhood, Eli. Who was _okay_. Yeah, sure, he was all blond and easy smile and _abs_ , but he had majored in business and wasn’t that smart. So yeah. He was okay. Nothing special.

Not that Victoria was as impossibly smart as he used to think she was. Victoria excelled at science and math, but struggled with English and tended to give the most literal interpretation of everything she read. Her social skills were abysmal, and he found out she had been forced to learn basic makeup from her friend, Rory.

Victoria never showed her teeth when she smiled. It was always a quick, darting thing, more like a facial twitch than a real smile. He was okay with that, though. He smiled enough for the both of them.

But there would never be any simple anecdote to describe Victoria.

Actually, now that he thought about it, this had to go back all the way to first grade. His first love had to be Jenny Carswell, who liked to pull the wings off bugs and throw rocks at birds.

Maybe he liked the crazies. _That’s not an acceptable medical term,_ came Victoria’s voice immediately, reprimanding and disappointed. _You should know better._

Maybe _he_ was crazy.

There was a lot of evidence pointing toward it, he thought, staring down the gun Victoria had told him to keep at home “just in case”.

The “in case” being that the thing that used to be Robert showing up.

Not for the first time he wondered what would happen if he just ran. Went off, changed his name, joined the circus. He could probably learn to swallow fire. Or be the bearded lady. Minus the lady part.

But Victoria needed him. She liked to pretend she didn’t, that this was all part of the “learning curve”, but he knew he couldn’t let her do this alone. It was both of their endeavor, and they’d have to do it together. Things had gone from bad to worse after they had brought him back, especially as they had realized that the whole brought back to life thing turned out a … whole lot more grotesque than they thought it would. And then there had been the incident with the kid on Eli’s little league team, and … well, it wasn’t exactly easy to sleep at night when there was some _thing_ swearing revenge on you and your lab partner.

But it didn’t mean he was going to start carrying a gun.

His foot hurt. Peter Dinklage (the toe, not the actor) tended to have a weird sort of spidey sense whenever sometimes had gone wrong. Which would have been a cool super power, if things had not _constantly been going wrong_ in the last month.

Sure enough, his phone rang, the first few bars of _The Imperial March_. Victoria.

“You find him?” he asked, as soon as he picked up.

“No,” Victoria said, her voice muffled. “I did not.” She was panting, like she carrying something heavy.

“Vic?”

“Just come to the lab,” she said, and she sounded like – like she was on the verge of _tears._

“Victoria, is everything okay?”

“Get to the lab!” she yelled, and he flinched.

“Okay, okay, I’ll be there soon!”

It was a little past three am when he parked by the lab. There was no one in sight – mid terms were over, and everyone was taking some time to relax. It was pitch black, and he had to use his iPhone’s flashlight to hobble over to the entrance of the lab. There was a noise over by the dumpsters, and he felt his heart stop. Robert.

Maybe he should have brought the gun.

He took a step forward, phone in one hand and the other up, fingers splayed. “Uh, Robert?” he asked. “I don’t want to hurt you. I come in peace.” He knew that worked on aliens. Hopefully it worked on reincarnated former film students as well.

“Who are you talking to?” came a voice from the darkness, and Iggy shrieked and dropped his phone.

“Will you be quiet?” the voice spoke again, and sighed.

Victoria stepped into the light, looked annoyed. She had dark shadows under her eyes, and a light sheen of sweat on her forehead.

“Oh, thank God,” Iggy said, clutching his heart. “Oh god. I’m just … gonna sit on the ground for a bit. Don’t mind me.”

“This wouldn’t have happened if you just stayed calm,” she said, sighing again, but she kneeled down to his level and squinted at him.

“I think I’m having a heart attack.”

“You’re not having a heart attack,” she said. “Up.”

He stood, and she wiped off her jeans. She wasn’t wearing her lab coat. It was weird to see her without it.

“Why did you call me over?” he said, still trying to catch his breath.

Victoria hesitated. “You’ll see.”

He frowned, and followed her into the lab. The light was dim, and he spotted a shape on the table that he couldn’t quite make out. Victoria led him forward, and he tilted his head and examined the shape closer. It was Rory. She was passed out, her hair disheveled and around her face.

“Whoa,” Iggy said. “How drunk did she get? Is she gonna be okay?”

Victoria pressed her lips together, and then shook her head. She reached over and gingerly moved Rory’s dirty blonde hair away from her neck.

Her neck, usually as pretty and pristine as the rest of her, had been marked with black in the shape of fingers.

She had been strangled.

Iggy took a step back.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “This can’t be happening. Not – not her.”

Victoria nodded, her eyes now filled with tears. “I was – a few hours ago we were talking. I wanted some time alone, and when I came back …”

He couldn’t stop staring. He had never seen the dead body of someone he _knew_ before. Robert was different. Robert was – Victoria had managed to convince him, that he was just in some sort of temporary state and he wasn’t really dead.

But Rory…

“We’re going to have to tell her parents,” Iggy said, softly. “And her friends. And ... And Eli.”

“No,” Victoria said, so fiercely it surprised him. “We barely avoided suspicion the last time this happened. We can’t risk it. We can’t risk being – being taken down, before we’ve had a chance to stop the Creation.”

He blinked at her in horror, but she was – she was right. No one else understood Robert like they did. If they let it become someone else’s problem, who knew who else would get hurt.

“So what do you… do you want to just … hide the body?”

“Of course not,” Victoria said, her voice steadier. Any trace of tears were gone now. “We’ll keep her body in storage-” she caught Iggy’s look of horror, and ignored it. “… Until we have this whole thing settled and the creature is taken care of, and she can be … she can be properly buried. Or …”

“Or what?”

“Nothing,” she said, quickly. “Now help me. I hurt my back carrying her over.”

Victoria stood at one end of the table, by her end, and he took the opposite. Even her feet were pretty. Rory had been wearing sandals, each toenail painted a different color.

For a moment he was unable to move, and then Victoria’s voice was there, bringing him back to reality.

“You still with me?”

“Yeah,” Iggy said, voice low. “We’ve already come this far.”

“Good,” Victoria said, and on the count of three, they picked up the dead body of Victoria’s former best friend.

The wrong girl, he thought. Yeah. It was always the wrong girl.


End file.
